Off the wire
• Singapore president to visit Thailand to pay respects to late King  • Airstrikes resume in Sanaa as UN envoy due to revive Yemen truce  • Outstanding loans to small businesses up 15.9 pct  • Opium poppy cultivation rises in Afghanistan: report  • Smog to hit N China  • Top news items in major Kenyan media outlets  • Inner Mongolia tackles shortage of rural medical professionals  • Baby girl "born twice" after life-saving surgery to remove rare tumor  • Dubai airport posts sharp decline in peak arrival delay  • Zambian president names commission to probe election violence  
You are here: 　 Home

1st LD Writethru: Lithuania holds 2nd round of parliamentary elections

Xinhua, October 23, 2016 Adjust font size:

Lithuania is holding the second round of parliamentary election on Sunday to elect 68 members of the 141-member unicameral parliament or the Seimas, whose 73 other members were elected in the first round of election on Oct. 9.

According to the Central Electoral Commission (CEC), by 1:00 p.m. local time (1100 GMT), 14.58 percent of the country's 2.5 million eligible voters have cast their votes to elect the Seimas. Including the early voting, the total activity amounts to 20.58 percent.

The runoff voting takes place in the single-seat constituencies with the voters choosing between two candidates that have received the most support in their constituency in the first round of voting two weeks ago.

Lithuania has already elected 73 members of the Seimas with 70 candidates elected in the nationwide multi-seat constituency and 3 candidates securing their seats after the first round in their single-seat constituencies.

After the first round of voting, Lithuanian Social Democratic Party, the leader of the current ruling coalition, came third with 13 seats. On Sunday, the country's Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius said his party will probably work as an opposition party.

"I think there is 70 percent probability that we will work in the opposition," Butkevicius told journalists after casting his vote in Vilnius, Lithuanian capital.

Ten social democratic candidates were leading the voting in their single-seat constituencies in the first round. Butkevicius said he expects his party fellows to win 13 seats in the runoff voting.

Butkevicius declined to comment on whether he has decided to resign as the social democratic party's leader.

"I will tell my plans soon," he told journalists.

The parliament's main conservative opposition party, the Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats, have won 21 seats, or the most, after the first voting, closely followed by the Peasants and Green Union with 19 seats secured. Political analysts expect both parties to form the ruling coalition, probably including the Liberal Movement.

The leader of the conservatives Gabrielius Landsbergis believes the talks can start as early as Sunday evening.

He told local media that the agreement between the three leaders of the Homeland Union, the Liberal Movement and the Peasants could form "a basis for a stable government". Endit